Like many companies, Netflix pays to rent space on Amazon's massive banks of servers. The outage, which affected devices such as tablets and smartphones, began at about 3:30 p.m. ET Monday.

Many Netflix users had to scratch those plans to gather around the laptop for "It's a Wonderful Life," "A Christmas Story" or "Santa's Slay" (the 2005 classic starring former wrestler Bill Goldberg as a deranged Santa demon). Although for the desperate, "Shrek the Halls" was available on ABC.

Netflix said service was restored Christmas morning. "Special thanks to our awesome members for being patient. We're back to normal streaming levels. We hope everyone has a great holiday,' said the company on Twitter.

Still, the Internet was not amused -- which didn't stop some social-media users from trying to be amusing.

Here are some of our favorite Twitter posts from the long winter night of our discontent:

Chris D'Elia ‏(@chrisdelia)

"So @netflix is down? Great. Now everybody has to talk to their annoying family."

Razzle Dangerously ‏(@MyNameisRazzle2)

"Netflix is down, most likely overloaded... Which means I'm not the only one bored as hell at his parents house.."

Jess Dweck ‏(@TheDweck)

"So depressed about Netflix being down that all I wanna do is lie on the couch and watch Netflix."